Geography

Mauritius is a mountainous island in the Indian
Ocean east of Madagascar.

Government

Parliamentary democracy within the British
Commonwealth.

History

After a brief Dutch settlement, French
immigrants who came in 1715 named the island Île de France and
established the first road and harbor infrastructure, as well as the sugar
industry, under the leadership of Gov. Mahe de Labourdonnais. Blacks from
Africa and Madagascar came as slaves to work in the sugarcane fields. In
1810, the British captured the island and in 1814, by the Treaty of Paris,
it was ceded to Great Britain along with its dependencies.

Indian immigration, which followed the abolition
of slavery in 1835, rapidly changed the fabric of Mauritian society, and
the country flourished with the increased cultivation of sugarcane. The
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 heralded the decline of Mauritius as a
port of call for ships rounding the southern tip of Africa, bound for
South and East Asia. The economic instability of the price of sugar, the
main crop, in the first half of the 20th century brought civil unrest,
then economic, administrative, and political reforms. Mauritius became
independent on March 12, 1968.